Intel rapidly gaining market share in tablets

Windows 8 tablets did surprisingly well in the first quarter, boosting Intel's share of the market from practically zero to around 7 percent.

SAN FRANCISCO—Intel Corp. is rapidly expanding its presence in the media tablet market, according to analysts who believe Intel's potential to generate sizable profit in the tablet space is underestimated by investors.

In a report circulated Monday (April 29), Ross Seymore, a research analyst from Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., said Intel has a market share of more than 90 percent of Windows-based tablets. Windows-based tablets accounted for a surprising 7.5 percent of the tablet market in the first quarter, according to data released last week by market research firm Strategy Analytics Inc.

Seymore said Intel expects its tablet SoC shipments to double in the second quarter compared with the first quarter as it continues to ramp the Clover Trail version of its Atom SoC for Windows 8 and Lexington for Android.

Source: Strategy Analytics

Second quarter tablet shipments are expected to remain essentially flat with first quarter shipments, according to Seymore. Shipments of Apple's iPads—still the leader in market share—are expected to decline sharply, Seymore said, which implies significant market share gains for Intel.

"We note that Intel had essentially no presence in tablets in 2012 and therefore any presence in 2013/2014 yields share gains and a revenue generator to at least partially offset weakness in the traditional PC market," Seymore wrote.

Windows tablets featuring Intel's Clover Trail Atom SoC are now available at price points as low as $449, Seymore said. These tablets largely negate any bill of materials savings offered by ARM SoCs while offering similar performance and power efficiency, he said.

Yeah, when having the choice between a dual core Atom that costs $40, and a *quad core* Cortex A15 (that also happens to be much faster per core than Atom) for only $20, it makes very little sense for manufacturers to go with Intel.
Intel's only hope is to be at least part of the declining Windows market, where you may actually need x86 processors for some power users.

They still do. this is no different than calling all Windows PC's "tablets" all of the sudden, and then declaring Intel the winner with 80% of the tablet chip maker.
This is exactly what happened here, just at a smaller scale. They only called "some" of the new Windows PC's "tablets".
To actually "gain" something, Intel needs to make "new" tablets, not just devices that they would've sold anyway as notebooks.

But that's the thing. They didn't make any "gains" per se. They are just calling some of the Windows 8 devices (which Microsoft taught us to also call PC's) "tablets". But the PC/Windows market is still declining, "Windows tablets" or not.

More PR spin from Intel. This happened only because $1,000 Windows hybrids are now also called "tablets".
Intel didn't actually "gain" anything. They just renamed part of their market as something else, and called it a "win".
But the truth is that's just part of the declining PC market, Intel may be "gaining" share in the PC market, by renaming these devices, but they will keep on losing revenue.

@Carl_J
the best selling intel tablet product is the microsoft surface. if u look at the specs below you can find the CPU is a full fledged ULV Intel Core i5 X86 chip with HD4000 graphics, which costs roughly 150-200$ in 1K units. This is basically a repackaged PC in a ultra portable form factor.. not a tablet, ie consumption device, in the traditional sense. the people who opt for such a device are the regular pc users, who were hesitant to shift to the tablet formfactor just because they couldnt use their existing softwares. So you can count this as the market share which " would otherwise have gone to Android and Apple" .
http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-8-pro/specifications
", even Apple project lower sales of iPad in Q2 than Q1" well if you check the history a bit you will understand that Apple sales numbers are extremely cyclical with Q2 having low sales, due to anticipated new product release in Q3 beginning. you should also checkout the projected sales in Q3, and Q4 which comes after Q2 :)
"furthermore, with a SoC processor capable of running Android, Intel will be able to tap into the Android tablet market as well."
At this point Android tablet market is totally out of Intel's reach with market being spoiled by manufacturers selling devices at 100-200$. Intel cant compete unless they plan to giveaway free money as chips.
All this talk about intel increasing market share in "tablet" segment is total non sense. They are still selling the notebook category X86 chips at 100+$ and calling it "tablet" market. Thats what it is .